


All That Glitters

by hrhrionastar



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 11:52:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every time a new Lord Rahl ascends the throne, it's a new day in D'Hara. But something old lurks in the People's Palace. And the Rahls never quite seem to escape their past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That Glitters

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LotS bingo. Prompt: _what fools these mortals be_.

There is a curse on the Rahl family.  
  
Once vows were broken and tears were shed and great magic was called up, but now all that remains of she who cast the curse is an echo.  
  
The spirit of vengeance.  
  
She dwells in a hidden room at the very heart of the People's Palace. None but a Rahl may pass through the door. Indeed, none but a Rahl may even _see_ the door.  
  
In the room are two crowns. One is gold, covered with jewels, and glittering with promise. It dazzles the eye so much that one might easily fail to see the other, the iron crown beside it. Plain and dark, this crown seems to draw veiling shadows about itself even as its companion shines the brighter.  
  
The crowns hang on two hooks in the wall. The wall is not curved, yet somehow the gold crown seems closer. Easier and more welcome to the touch.  
  
In the first days after the curse, each Lord Rahl would come to the hidden room and choose a crown when he gained the throne.  
  
But the golden crown was heavy, a weary burden on the brow. And though the Rahls quickly forgot the curse itself, rumors did grow that the crown was dangerous. It had an aura of evil that unnerved even the early Lords Rahl.  
  
On the death of each king, the golden crown returned to the hidden room. His heir could not steal the crown from his head, but had to go thither after his father's death and make the choice between the two crowns for himself.  
  
The curse took many forms. Kinslaying was common among the Rahl family. Illness and weakness also had their part, as did treachery and deceit.  
  
But gradually the Lords Rahl ceased to choose the golden crown, or wear an inferior ornament, and all in the hidden room was quiet.  
  
The spirit of vengeance did not sleep.  
  
She watched as centuries whirled by outside. D'Hara grew and conquered, for although the Lords Rahl rarely lived to die of old age in their beds, they were not idle. They won glory and riches, the seductive promise of the golden crown.  
  
Always the spirit waited for the one who would break the curse.  
  
Panis Rahl succeeded his father early, and grew up under a regency government. He was a promising child, bright and golden and recklessly joyful, but the curse twisted his confidence to misplaced pride and his happiness to selfish hedonism.  
  
He cared little for the history of his people. He never so much as looked for the hidden room.  
  
His son was Darken Rahl, child and heir of darkness. Born under a red star of war, Darken Rahl yet sought peace for his wounded spirit.  
  
It was his curse—a doom that had little to do with the spirit in her hidden room—that he never found it.  
  
He cared for gold and jewels only as marks of his growing power, a way of keeping score. Hence when he found a reference to the hidden room and the golden crown in the Rahl archives, he ignored it until a much later and more desperate time. Instead he focused all his restless energy on objects that would bring him swifter victories.  
  
Darken Rahl made the lords of D'Hara rich. They did not thank him for it.  
  
His successor was his brother, Richard Rahl. This man labored under a different destiny, one of endless searching. The Seeker of Truth.  
  
The spirit of vengeance had high hopes of him at one time.  
  
Richard Rahl took the D'Haran throne reluctantly. He freed the Midlands from Darken Rahl the conqueror.  
  
So he claimed. His wife was the Mother Confessor, heir to curses of her own. Each was a ruler, so they ruled both lands together.  
  
"A new day in D'Hara," said Richard Rahl, with his Confessor wife and his blond First Mistress on his either side.  
  
But war came to him as surely as it had to his ancestors. His wizard was killed.  
  
And one day Darken Rahl returned. Back from the Underworld yet again.  
  
He stole into the palace and found the hidden room, but not before Richard Rahl and the Confessor found him.  
  
They followed. The Confessor was with child, and as the soon-to-be mother of a Rahl she was let through the hidden door. A courtesy, or else a loophole in the magic.  
  
But the Confessor could not see the crowns. That choice remained for Darken and Richard Rahl alone.  
  
The spirit waited. She would have held her breath, if she'd had breath to hold.  
  
Darken Rahl took down the golden crown.  
  
The spirit hissed in frustration.  
  
 _Fool!_ Her voice was too faint to be heard, yet all three mortals stood listening for a frozen moment.  
  
The golden crown could exert a powerful fascination on any and all those who beheld it. Now it sparkled with such brilliance that Richard and Darken Rahl were blinded.  
  
The spirit could not discern whether it was foolish greed or reckless bravery that made Richard Rahl lunge for the crown. The Sword of Truth pierced Darken Rahl's heart at the same moment that Richard Rahl's fingers closed on the sharp golden edge.  
  
The curse slept until a Rahl touched a crown.  
  
The golden one twisted all in its wearer's heart to wickedness and despairing glory.  
  
The iron one broke the curse.  
  
It was impossible to choose twice.  
  
Richard Rahl hung the golden crown back on its hook, and only then did he look dismayed to find he had at last fulfilled the quest his wizard had first set him: to kill Darken Rahl.  
  
The Mother Confessor refused to come to the funeral, on "moral grounds."  
  
In fact on the day Darken Rahl's body was burned she spent hours being violently ill. It was assumed that it was being with child that turned her stomach, for she had breathed the scent of charred flesh many times before while banelings roamed the Land of the Living. But within days the illness had spread to the entire People's Palace.  
  
The curse had begun its work upon Richard Rahl.  
  
The spirit waited still in the hidden room, knowing that another opportunity would come soon. She was aware of all that passed in the palace around her.  
  
So she knew when, scarcely a decade after he'd usurped the throne from the dead-and-resurrected-and-dead-again Darken Rahl, Richard Rahl had an unwelcome guest.  
  
The boy was young, heartbreakingly so some might have said. Blond hair pulled severely back from a face any who knew Darken Rahl would have recognized in an instant. Green eyes like the Underworld that mocked all they gazed upon. The scars of a childhood spent surviving peril and treachery and misery. Reckless courage that matched the Seeker's own.  
  
Sam Rahl challenged his uncle to a duel.  
  
The Sword of Truth had never failed Richard Rahl. Until now.  
  
Sam Rahl slew Richard Rahl in a fair fight. The Confessor fled with her Mord'Sith—the woman who would not and could not recognize her own son—and her two Rahl daughters. Sam Rahl took the throne.  
  
The spirit prays that Sam Rahl is the one. She calls him to the hidden room with all the power that remains in her and hopes that he will make the right choice.  
  
The day a Rahl chooses the plain iron crown instead of the bright gold one the curse will be broken.  
  
She who cast it never imagined it would last so long. But the spirit of vengeance knows that all mortals, witch and Rahl and Confessor, are fools.  
  
The spirit knows also that if Sam Rahl chooses gold and glory over peace and the promise of hope, then one day soon Richard Rahl's daughter will return to D'Hara and confess him and claim her birthright. And who knows what she will choose?  
  
So the spirit waits. All that remains of her now is hope. Hope that someday there will be a Rahl who makes the right choice.  
  
When the curse is broken the spirit will fade.  
  
She will have peace.  



End file.
